Cover to Cover: Days by Ray Davis - The Kinks, cover by Kirsty MacColl

 The Original

The Cover

Hello D & N

Well this is a tough c2c. I love both versions and feel quite torn by them. I’ve heard them both for years. I think I’m gonna go with MacColl.

Here are a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I’m so surprised by her voice in this song. It’s so strong and accented. There’s a freshness in it.

Secondly, she’s more believable than The Kinks.

It’s a strange song really. Ray Davis is writing about loss. Yet the song is so upbeat. His harmonies with his brother are fantastic but there’s no connection to the implied sense of loss buried in the song. Perhaps that sense of loss is carried better in a woman’s voice. She sings it upbeat like the lads but as Nicki writes,

‘she gives it a slightly more melancholy feel to the song. It feels more mellow and controlled.’ I agree with Nicki. I think it’s a woman’s voice that we feel better expresses the tortured joy that is being described here. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘a broken Hallelujah.’ Except of course Cohen was a man and wrote and sang beautifully about loss.